By Geoff Fein
In the almost three years Rear Adm. Terry Benedict headed up the program executive office for integrated warfare systems he and his staff have been working to lay the foundation for the Navy’s dive into opening up surface ship combat systems.
Benedict has left to take command of Strategic Systems Programs, but before departing PEO IWS he told Defense Daily the Navy and industry are coming together on open architecture.
“First and foremost I would consider the biggest accomplishment the partnership I have witnessed develop between government and industry,” he said. “The Navy can have a vision but the Navy doesn’t build combat systems, industry does. We set requirements [and] industry builds [to them]. What I have seen industry do is embrace, over time, the Navy’s philosophy of moving toward open architecture combat systems of the future.”
But it hasn’t been an easy path to trek. Industry, at times, has questioned the speed at which the Navy is moving toward incorporating open architecture. But Benedict believes the service has shown its dedication to the effort. “I think we had to prove that we were serious about this.”
Benedict points to a number of examples that demonstrate the Navy is serious about open architecture. For example, the Open Architecture Enterprise Teams made up of PEOs and contracting authorities, the guidebook developed for program managers that has pre-approved contract clauses that are now a requirement, and the inclusion of open architecture in the acquisition gate review process.
“Moving toward the open architecture, objective architecture, has now for me jelled into a way of life instead of a thing that we do,” he added. “That’s most important.”
Had the move toward open architecture been for the sake of open architecture as opposed to a very disciplined analytical systems engineering structure, it wouldn’t have been successful, Benedict said.
“I think we have moved in that direction and that has been with the tremendous assistance of industry. Their assistance has been, one, in support of execution on systems like Aegis, SSDS and LCS,” he said. “Also they have helped us by pushing us a little bit with our leadership to ensure we are staying consistent with opening contracts up to competition.”
The Navy has also made a strong commitment to Congress, Benedict added.
Every quarter the service files its report on the status of open architecture efforts across all the domains and enterprises, from space to littoral and mine warfare to the Marine Corps.
“We made a strong commitment to Congress in our reports that we would open up systems for competition, that we would where possible drive in small businesses, and [look for] other opportunities…for lower cost and technical, innovative approaches,” he said. “I think, again, we are demonstrating that.”
In the most recent report to Congress the Navy expanded beyond the surface commitment to include commitments from all the PEOs to bring in open architecture where possible. Those efforts will be tracked in the 2010 open architecture reports to Congress, Benedict added.
“Whether it is at the enterprise level, PEO level, or at the program level, I believe we are right on track with our commitment to the leadership of the Navy and Congress,” he said.
There are challenges ahead for Capt. Jim Syring, who has been nominated to the rank of rear admiral and to take over the helm at PEO IWS.
For example, shifting out of MILSPEC hardware and software presented challenges, Benedict said. “Some of those we understood and anticipated and some I would say in hindsight we did not.
“I think the thing I have seen us do as we have evolved is that we have learned from our lessons and we factor those in a disciplined process into the next evolution so that we don’t reinvent the wheel,” he said.
Any system is made up of five pieces: Hardware, software, training, documentation, and people, Benedict said.
“As we have moved out of MILSPEC and into COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) hardware, it requires that all five pieces adjust,” he said. “The hardware is pretty easy, everybody understands the hardware. Instead of building a processor, you go buy a processor. Instead of writing your own software, you go use commercial application programs and integrate them. I think people get that.”
Where people have a harder time understanding the challenges of OA are in the training, documentation and people, Benedict added.
Documentation needs to be written differently than it did when the Navy was writing for military specifications, he said.
“When we controlled MILSPEC for the hardware or software, writing the documentation…flowed differently because we had the very spec from the hardware and software and therefore we could write the documentation,” Benedict said. “When you are buying hardware, when you are buying software, the documentation needs to be written such that it assimilates what you know about those [technologies] because you didn’t build those [technologies] yourself.”
Training also needs to be different, he added. “I have found on a MILSPEC part in a MILSPEC system you can build the reliability into the part yourself.”
When buying a COTS part, that reliability is built in. And since the Navy won’t have control of the specification, they have to turn to redundancy. In some cases that means buying multiple processors to make up for the lack of being able to design and build the reliability into one processor, Benedict added.
“That training needs to be different because now if I lose one of the processors due to a failure, at the systems level I may not see an impact to the overall performance,” he noted. “But that doesn’t mean you can let that processor that failed sit there. So the training that goes with a COTS-based architecture is different than the training that goes with MILSPEC. In some instances we have done that well, in some instances we have opportunities to go do it better.”
Because of the redundancy associated with using COTS systems, it’s possible a sailor coming out of a school house could go years before seeing a failure, Benedict added.
“What we have to think about with training and people is how best to deliver that training and then have what I call ‘just-in-time refresher training’ in some of our electronic technical manuals,” Benedict said. “Or do we just train them in the school and hope they remember it a couple of years later? Or do we not train them in the school and train them in the actual event?”
All of those go back to–how does the Navy want to create the human system interface (HSI), Benedict said. “So HIS, to me, plays a significantly larger role in COTS-based hardware and software than it potentially did back in MILSPEC systems.
“While [COTS] are somewhat less complex because we are buying directly from industry and taking advantage of technology improvements and innovation, at the system level, I am not certain that they are that much simpler. In fact, I think they are more complex,” Benedict added. “I think some of that we understood but as we have built them and fielded them, we are witnessing some of [those challenges].”